13 Posters Where Adam Sandler Has the Exact Same Expression

I’m currently working on an essay that considers Sandler as an artist and filmmaker. I don’t like Pixels (or Grown Ups [or Jack and Jill (or Just Go For It [or The Cobbler])]) but I have liked Adam Sandler movies in the past. My college dorm room VHS collection included Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, and I was thrilled when he collaborated with Paul Thomas Anderson on Punch-Drunk Love. I think You Don’t Mess With the Zohan is an underrated movie (seriously; it’s funny and sweet). Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, I think he’s a talented guy with creative days ahead of him.

But anyway, I’m working on this piece, which involves looking back at his career and thinking about his old movies. And browsing through his IMDb page, and doing some Google searches, I suddenly realize: Adam Sandler makes the exact same face in almost every single movie poster. There are a few notable exceptions (including Billy Madison, his first big breakthrough, along with later films like Bedtime Stories and That’s My Boy), but generally speaking Adam Sandler advertises his movies with the same expression: head cocked slightly to the side, lips perched in a small, tight smirk with few to no teeth visible.

You don’t see it on the poster for Pixels, but here are 13 different examples where you do see it, deployed in a vast array of emotions from “mildly perturbed” to “slightly amused.” What does it mean? Is this the definitive “Adam Sandler Face”? The purest expression of his onscreen persona? Does he have undiagnosed facial paralysis? Who knows! All I know he makes the same expression in all of these posters. Time after time after time.